BHUBANESWAR: The state government’s decision to set up a dedicated commission to determine the extent of reservation required for Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBCs) in local bodies has opened a fresh political and legal debate ahead of the next panchayat elections, due before April 2027.
The commission, headed by retired Orissa High Court judge Justice Pramath Patnaik, has been asked to ascertain the rural and urban local body-wise proportion of the SEBC population and undertake an empirical inquiry into their political backwardness and representation in local bodies.
The move is being viewed with skepticism by Opposition parties which alleged that the government could use the exercise to delay the local body elections.
Senior Congress leader and former Union minister Srikant Jena, a strong advocate of OBC reservation, said three months would be inadequate to determine the SEBC population through a fresh empirical exercise.
“This is an attempt to delay the panchayat and urban local body elections,” Jena said, pointing out that the previous BJD government had constituted the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes in February 2020 under retired Justice Raghunath Biswal. Its report, he said, is yet to be placed before the Assembly.
BJP leader and former state OBC Morcha president Surath Biswal, however, said three months would be sufficient as government records could provide quantifiable data. Land records, in particular, could be useful since caste details are recorded in pattas (Records of Rights), he said.
Biswal said the BJP had long demanded 27 per cent reservation for OBCs in local bodies, as provided in several other states. He cited the Madhya Pradesh experience, where the Supreme Court in December 2021 stayed polling for seats reserved for OBCs and directed that they be treated as general seats after the state failed to complete the mandatory triple-test process.
The SC’s ‘triple test’ requires states seeking to provide OBC/SEBC reservation in local body elections to establish, through a dedicated commission, the nature and extent of backwardness in relation to local bodies; determine the proportion of reservation required on the basis of quantifiable empirical data; and ensure that the aggregate reservation for SCs, STs and OBCs does not exceed 50 per cent.
Odisha faces an additional challenge because SCs and STs together account for about 38.75 per cent of its population, leaving limited headroom within the 50 per cent ceiling for SEBC reservation.
Biswal said the state should seek the Centre’s intervention for a special dispensation, arguing that Odisha’s SEBC population exceeds 50 per cent but that restricting their reservation to 11.25 per cent would be a great injustice to a vast majority of the population.
Sambalpur MP and former Union minister Dharmendra Pradhan had written to Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi and the National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC), demanding 27 per cent reservation for OBCs.
